A contrarian blog, because the majority is wrong about a lot of stuff.

December 23, 2012

Ross Douthat

Unfortunately for our country, the Bloomberg versus LaPierre contrast is basically all of American politics today. Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor and righteousness and a conservatism that’s marched into an ideological cul-de-sac and is currently battering its head against the wall.

The right-wing view is embittered, paranoid and confused. It opposes anything the establishment supports but doesn’t know what it wants to do instead. (Defund government or protect Medicare? Break up the banks or deregulate them? Send more troops to Libya or don’t get involved? Protect our liberties or put our schools on lockdown?)

So long as Ross is not denying the truth of HBD or being blind to the absurdity of a smart guy like him believing in the unscientific two-thousand-year-old superstition of Christianity, he’s almost always on target.

13 Comments

"Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor"

The American left is living and working in a Starbucks silo where they are completely divorced from reality, facts, and logic. The old Communist left wasn't this out of whack with reality; do you suppose Joe Stalin ever once privately thought blacks were on average as smart as whites?

"he’s almost always on target."

His argument against the NRA's plan makes no sense. Why can't elementary schools be protected by armed guards? Four star generals are protected by armed men, not unarmed grade school teachers. So why can't elementary school children be protected by ex-cops?

Btw, Douthat also copied my idea for cutting the payroll tax in half and replacing it with a national sales tax, although Douthat wants to get rid of the entire payroll tax and replace it with some other type.

Salaries are a major factor, with some law professors at elite or large law schools earning in excess of $350,000 to $400,000 annually. These sums significantly outpace other legal remuneration, except for the 10% in the upper ranks at top law firms.

One solution, he says, is for professors to teach more courses each academic year to cut back on law school salary budgets. Other schools could rely more on part-time professors and offer two-year degrees to shave the overall tuition bill.

Law school enrollment is down 9 percent from a year ago and 15 percent from 2010, the American Bar Association recently reported.

The ABA Section of Legal Education released the preliminary numbers for the first time ahead of its normal publication in the spring, on account of media speculation about the drop in enrollment.

“a lot of entities were gathering data website to website,” said Barry Currier, the ABA’s interim consultant on legal education. “While hopefully accurate, it was incomplete. We wanted to avoid people relying on partial data. We had the data and verified that it was accurate and thought it would be appropriate to release in advance of our final report.”

The data shows that 44,481 students began their law school studies this fall, down from a high of 52,488 in fall of 2010.

Armed guards = First ones shot.
Can we not just fence in the schools with barbed wire already?
Is it too early to point out that the official tally of dead children by american drones is 176 or so?
No teddy bears for them though.
Reap what ye sow.

Eliminating unnecessary courses is a great way to defund liberal universities.

Btw, there's a movement in medical schools to eliminate the arguably unneccessary fourth year as a way to cut med school tuition by 25%. I hope this trend will lead to eliminating general education requirements for undergrads because it would result in mass layoffs in American liberal arts departments and, consequently, inflict much damage on the Cathedral:

N.Y.U. and Other Medical Schools Offer Shorter Course in Training, for Less Tuition

Administrators at N.Y.U. say they can make the change without compromising quality, by eliminating redundancies in their science curriculum, getting students into clinical training more quickly and adding some extra class time in the summer.

snip

Eileen Dee, a third-year student in the three-year program at Texas Tech, said the compressed curriculum made her feel “not necessarily more hurried, just more responsible.”

But, she said, doing clinical work while taking classes had reinforced her textbook knowledge and, she believed, improved her score on the science portion of the medical licensing exam.

Natalie Smith, a fourth-year medical student at N.Y.U., who is planning to go into anesthesiology, said that she and her friends had often fantasized about completing medical school in less time, if only to save on tuition. The fourth year of medical school is typically spent on career exploration, by taking elective courses and interviewing for residencies. Yet, she noted, “We’re paying that same tuition with less amount of learning.”

Looking back, she said, finishing medical school in three years seems “completely doable.”

Douthat very likely knows the truth about HBD but he is not dumb enough to write about it. No doubt he likes having a regular column in the NYT. He is quite clever about not setting out his full view on any topic. It seems clear that he moderates his views to make his columns more widely palatable.

I think the NRA may be playing the long game. They propose armed guards for schools and all of the progressives instinctively attack the idea. Then the NRA attacks the armed security details and armed body guards of those same progressives.

Now progressives will be left trying to defend their own security as necessary and effective while claiming that no one else should have them.

If armed security is ineffective, then why does every governor and big city mayor travel with armed security. If only the government should have guns, then why do celebrities have armed body guards.